“When you have to kill a man…”

by Richard Langworth on 14 March 2009

Churchill was crit­i­cized for his extremely respect­ful let­ter to the Japan­ese Ambas­sador to Britain in Decem­ber 1941, when inform­ing him that their coun­tries were at war. Churchill’s response to crit­ics was, “After all, when you have to kill a man it costs noth­ing to be polite.” Did he actu­ally have the man killed? —W.H., New York

No. Churchill was writ­ing in the abstract, and did not actu­ally pro­pose to slay the Ambas­sador. Fol­low­ing the usual diplo­matic pro­to­col, Mamoru Shigemitsu (Ambas­sador to the Soviet Union 1936–38 and to Britain 1938–41) was handed his pass­port and given unim­peded pas­sage back to Japan. As Japan’s Min­is­ter of For­eign Affairs at the end of World War II, he signed the instru­ment of sur­ren­der on USS Mis­souri in Tokyo Bay on 2 Sep­tem­ber 1945. Con­victed of war crimes, he was sen­tenced to seven years’ impris­on­ment, but was paroled in 1950 and again served as For­eign Min­is­ter in 1954–56. He died a year later at the age of 70.

Churchill’s let­ter, which was crit­i­cized in Par­lia­ment and pro­voked the response you quote, is recorded in his mem­oirs, The Sec­ond World War, vol­ume III, The Grand Alliance, pages 542-43:

Sir,

On the evening of Decem­ber 7th His Majesty’s Gov­ern­ment in the United King­dom learned that Japan­ese forces with­out pre­vi­ous warn­ing either in the form of a dec­la­ra­tion of war or of an ulti­ma­tum with a con­di­tional dec­la­ra­tion of war had attempted a land­ing on the coast of Malaya and bombed Sin­ga­pore and Hong Kong.

In view of these wan­ton acts of unpro­voked aggres­sion com­mit­ted in fla­grant vio­la­tion of Inter­na­tional Law and par­tic­u­larly of Arti­cle 1 of the Third Hague Con­ven­tion rel­a­tive to the open­ing of hos­til­i­ties, to which both Japan and the United King­dom are par­ties, His Majesty’s Ambas­sador at Tokyo has been instructed to inform the Impe­r­ial Japan­ese Gov­ern­ment in the name of His Majesty’s Gov­ern­ment in the United King­dom that a state of war exists between our two countries.